


ハミングバード ~HUMMING BIRD~

by ezyl (gamblers)



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, F/M, Fuck Or Die, Gen, M/M, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-10
Updated: 2010-09-10
Packaged: 2017-10-15 10:21:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamblers/pseuds/ezyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a phenomenon that usually occurs later in the year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ハミングバード ~HUMMING BIRD~

**Title** : ハミングバード (HUMMING BIRD)  
 **Pairings** : Luke/Nico, Percy/Annabeth, Luke/Thalia, implied Thalia/Annabeth (total l’antithèse, man)  
 **Rated** : NC-17  
 **Warnings** : _It doesn't make sense._  
 **Summary** : This is a phenomenon that usually occurs later in the year.  
 **Notes** : written for [](http://community.livejournal.com/pjo_bigbang/profile)[**pjo_bigbang**](http://community.livejournal.com/pjo_bigbang/). still can't believe i hit 16k. props to [](http://wise-stupidity.livejournal.com/profile)[**wise_stupidity**](http://wise-stupidity.livejournal.com/) for tackling this potatofuckery, and thank god for the mods at [](http://community.livejournal.com/pjo_bigbang/profile)[**pjo_bigbang**](http://community.livejournal.com/pjo_bigbang/). ♥

ハミングバード

She opens her mouth, eyes shine bright like sidewalk puddles on a sunny day. Her smile is beautiful. Shines like a satellite and a star and a superpower at once, makes his heart pound and his breath short and his ears red; glows and glows and glows and glows

(and she doesn’t have to be a goddess to be a goddess)

*

 _cold outside, today_

  
So they meet for the first time on the sidewalk near the public garden in Fresno, California city not really a California city, cheap streets and dirty playgrounds, probably too many melded layers of asphalt to be considered healthy. Fresh marijuana soaks the air like a semi-precious jewel in the hands of a mafia boss, and somewhere amidst the rusty barbed wire and rundown apartment buildings, the entire world can hear the crack of a whip against bare skin.

There’s a rhythm in the sky. It reminds him of the Senegalese rain sticks they sold at the souvenir shack down the street, three for five dollars (whoever thought of making a profit by selling Senegalese instruments in Fresno had clearly no interest in the stock exchange); these are only different because they’re stocked from the sky. Thick drops of rain roll from the tops of buildings to the tops of parallel-parked vehicles to the top of his umbrella to the tops of the slabs of cement on the sidewalk, right down into the bottom of his heart and then some. In fact, it is raining so hard that, if he’d stuck out his hand two feet in front of him, he’d probably never know where his fingers had gone.

Cold outside, today.

They are both holding umbrellas in the street. His is Very Nearly Beyond Repair, the wires supporting the black film bent at sixty-degree angles and loose at the screws. He is standing in front of an electronics store in which a color television display is airing a variety program; something to do with Japanese Rube-Goldberg machines and capillary action. He shakes his head, and little droplets of rain scatter from his hair like waterlogged lice. Digs a hand into the wet pocket of his jeans and feels cold coins click and stick to his skin. They might’ve jingled on a warmer day.

And he sees Luke the first time that day, in a rain of invisible fingers and Rube-Goldberg machines, while he is young and soaked to the skin, clutching a battered heart supporting a battered umbrella under a battered roof beneath a battered sky.

At the time, Luke has no money. Nico is filthy rich.

He’ll blame it on the gambling parlors, of course. Only so much that years of continuous pachinko and Texas Hold ‘Em will do to the wallet before it bursts and minds turn quisling for creativity and rational thought, neural synapses for criminal tendency in his cerebral hemisphere since fired and connected and re-fired and reconnected, again and again and again and again. So he doesn’t mind the extra cash, not really (who _would_ find that problematic, anyway?), even if he does have to mind the stray hands in the elevator.

A pretty smile, under this rain, he only thinks. He has a really pretty smile.

(At the time, Luke remembers nothing. Nico remembers too much.)

It is around the time when people are ducking under the eaves of cafés to eat grilled-cheese sandwiches, have a bit of liquor and maybe a bathroom fuck (or two) at a hostess club, catch up on the amorous and somewhat exaggerated details about personal life while under the influence of whiskey or weed (take your pick). Around the time when bygone businessmen will sit down to a cup of cream-colored latte instead of the regular black, stack a tidy pile of work papers on the edge of their coffee table and ignore it like there’s no tomorrow and too many yesterdays. Around the time when gossip mongers hang back in the corners, pore over tabloids and jab each other in the shoulder whenever productivity fades (hell no, Actress X cheating on Director Z with Lady Gaga?), and the manager of the café keeps a good head count of the ears listening in.

The first time they meet, it is startlingly sweet and shocking and ultimately Tragic.

Because (at the time), Luke had made a promise. And then Nico broke it.

*

 _it is a truth universally-acknowledged, that a lonely boy on the brink of suicidal-thought must be in want of another lonely boy, one who will inevitably light up his life_

  
The stage is still wobbly from their first practice promenade. A hostile pothole here, a paparazzo’s camera frame there, pair of silver hoop earrings fallen from grace. Girls give him the once-over by turning around and batting three-inch-long lashes: come-hither or I’ll feel you up myself and maybe file a sexual harassment complaint. Come dress-up time, Luke finds himself at a serious disadvantage when he tries to prevent the dominatrix stylist from rubbing on wildflower-scented mousse in his hair. The woman fiddling with the speaker dials at the sound booth tells him that his tie is crooked, all the while blushing a weird shade of apricot that has Luke nervous and resampling the aftertaste of his lunch. Indirect correlations, defunct social simulations, feeling the crust of last night’s beer and weed foam up under your tongue when you wake up—all common death of the world to him, all beyond expository thought. At least his misery limits any thought process to his hindbrain.

Though at this point, there is no doubt in his mind.

He hasn’t been conscious since last year.

*

 _he needs a drink or maybe seven_

  
Percy decides to propose to Annabeth on a public park bench. It’s sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing, really, though he’s never been the type to wax poetic—his life has been one sour disappointment after another. Annabeth is sipping strawberry-flavored tapioca, dangling her head in his lap and reciting the construction blueprints of an Indian cultural museum with Byzantine flairs—it’s her brainchild, most likely genius enough to become the next Architectural Wonder of the Century.

“You know the centripetal-styled ceiling beam at the second level –it’s a pure miracle they’d found the right raw size for African oak, seriously– that one? Charlemagne is thinking about switching it to the third level, but that wouldn’t work for shit, because we’d have to carve into the marvelous wood to cater to the dimensional stylists and proportions and shit. Defiling African oak. Can you imagine? What an ass.”

Percy mumbles his agreement.

…So he isn’t thinking about much; it’s a cloudy day and he feels unaccomplished; faith in humanity as diminished and as depressively-manic as he can imagine. He’s only dimly aware of Annabeth’s words; he’s currently in a state of unemployment and he is absolutely sure that, if he hadn’t been dating a girl who exceeded not only his intelligence quotient and his (nonexistent) income but his height, as well, he would not be so dull-brained and much more likely to say something that could possibly entertain his girlfriend. (He’s never tried to share this theory with Annabeth because the last time they’d discussed This Week’s Rent the blonde girl had laughed her silly ass off and then punched him in the face. He couldn’t help finding violent girls attractive.)

He had told her to wait. Wait for him to find a job, wait for the stock prices on strawberry jam to come down, wait for him to start intercepting the water and electricity bills before she found them piled up on her desk, wait for the car insurance confirmations to reappear in the mail and wait for the plants to get watered, wait for me, Annabeth, just wait for me. I’ll show those budget cutters and Wall Street fags, I’ll show them.

 _(it’s just as well that he knows that, for people like Annabeth, waiting is wasting)_

But it is in this moment that the sun comes out, blinding and shiny like a medallion in the sky, and Percy forgets pretty much everything because Annabeth has taken her hand and held it above her forehead to shield her eyes, let a little strip of bright sunlight settle onto her nose and her lips; her eyes are slanted and she’s breathing softly, chin tilted towards the light, and it’s the prettiest thing he’s ever seen since he’d learned what was pretty.

And so Percy does the most sensible thing that any post-adolescent member of the male species would have done.

“Marry me,” he blurts out, “Marry me, Annabeth.”

 _(marry me. right now. you and me, wedding bells and wedding sashes. don’t have a ring, but I mean every word of it)_

The moment he says it, he knows he shouldn’t have waited so long. He kind of hates himself for it, wants to say something to distract her but then her eyes flash and his breath has left his lungs. So she sits up on the park bench and gazes at him under half-lidded eyes, and then says it in the breathiest, sexiest voice in the history of breathy, sexy voices,

“Hell, no.”

The next thing he knows, she’s falling on the ground, rolling like a pig and snorting just as loud.

 _(because first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the little girl, the hospital bills and the plastic baby carriage)_

*

The boy in the cafe tells him that he’s actually not interested in buying cakes and whatever else you’ve got to offer, and instead Luke finds himself hanging around a rather sketchy section of the city, a paved road and a grassy park next to it, rusty swing sets and teeter-totters lining the banks of a duck pond. There are no children around. The place looks oddly familiar. Fresno, the sign had said? Luke makes a note of it and tries to find a place to sit down and eat his sandwich.

It is half-past nine, and the skies are still light from the midsummer drop zone of misty light and angular shadows lined like coincidences. Geometric values that have neither distinct boundaries nor lack of tangent lines. It’s going to be daybreak soon.

At some point, he starts to believe that it’s all a hoax. A pretty treasure map, handed to him by a pretty boy under a pretty umbrella under a pretty rain cloud. A distinct aftertaste of nostalgia accompanied by the wave of a hand, like sour bread and the petals on a yellow rose, yeast and stigma and walking off the beaten track. Mysterious words and actions that speak for other people instead of himself. What had possessed Luke to take the map? He’d never seen an angel in his life, and for some reason, he’d seriously doubt himself if he’d been speaking to one of God’s messengers.

He must’ve been desperate. He would have probably done anything then, if only to salvage a few more pennies in his pocket. The office had shut him out, he’d gotten dumped by a girl, he’d probably have found the nearest taxi driver and pleaded to give head. He doesn’t know what he would have done to make up for it. He’s honestly not exactly sure what he wants, not anymore, not in a long time.

Discreetly (or perhaps not) he starts referring to the boy as an Angel.

*

Thalia Grace gets off the bus one stop early and decides to walk to the convenience store on the left, the one with the voodoo jingle bells hanging on the door. She’s only smoking menthols, now, and not a single one of the shit-eating bastards at the company is going to stop her. It was enough that they cut out the regular tobacco from the footage, but menthols? It was a goddamn travesty. Jesus, Thalia, you just don’t get it, do you, Mr. Fat-Cheeked Director keeps telling her, the point is to omit the action of inhaling tobacco _out of your routine_ , but fuck that shit, if he couldn’t deal with it, she’ll just have to make him deal with it. Actresses and porn stars. What kind of difference did they make in the end, if she couldn’t chew on a cigarette during the shoot? She would not lobby or proposition, she would not faint and moan and play like a slut, she would not goddamn fuck another impotent asshole if she didn’t get her menthols.

Hell, she might even take pity on the salarymen. Let them get a sweaty hand under her skirt for half-price. She can still go cheap these days and not worry about the price.

*

The first store had pushed Percy away based on appearance alone.

“You’re too handsome,” the manager had told him flat-out, “And we don’t have enough cute girls to match your looks.” He says it like he’s almost wistful.

The next store had done the same, rejecting him based on the grounds that they did not encourage work-based relationships among employees. This wasn’t fair. Percy had done nothing to deserve this treatment. But the thought of Annabeth’s disapproving glare at home, that messy trail of tears bleeding into the stairwell had driven him out of the house. In the next place, he decides to comb back his hair and adopt the look of somebody’s disgruntled butler.

Somehow, this works.

The manager of the corner store takes one look at him and suddenly starts sobbing uncontrollably until Percy starts wondering what he’s done now; he’s flinging thick, hairy arms around Percy’s torso, and now he’s begging Percy to stay, the pay isn’t great but the people are nice, and you are certainly the man of my dreams, I beg of you, this is my request of a lifetime!

What’s he to do except take the job?

 _(after)_

  
“So tell me about your plans,” Luke says, and Thalia starts frowning, then.

“I don’t really have any,” she says at first, “I mean, I really wanted to give Annabeth a piece of me to take with her when she’d gone over, but now she’s got Percy Jackson and the floor plans of every single building she’s ever wanted to marry.”

Luke laughs, and Thalia just sits there and bites her lip.

“It’s kinda funny, isn’t it,” she says at last.

“It is,” Luke agrees.

And that’s the end of that.

  
 _(before)_

Bianca comes home the next day with a boy hugging her waist and twirling sweaty fingers in her hair, and Nico is suddenly brought back to his years of adolescence. How the kids in his high school had forgotten his existence. How all of his friends had all found girls and boys to go around with, kissing each other into the lockers in the hallway and finding ways to tease and admonish, laugh with each other, subscribe to loving each other. High school, the proverbial breeding grounds. How he’d wanted someone, back then. How he’d missed all of this.

“D-Dad,” Bianca tumbles over her words, “Dad, this is my boyfriend, Tony. Tony, this is my dad.”

It’s the first time, Nico thinks; it’s the first time she’s called me Dad.

“Hullo, Tony.”

Tony flashes him a neat smile and two fingers raised in salute, “Mr. di Angelo.”

There’s a moment of silence. Nico sizes the boy up, fair hair, slacked eyes, loose pants and all. “Would you guys like to come in?” he finally asks, cracks the door open a little wider, “I was just about to have dinner now, and there’s always room—”

“No, it’s okay!” his daughter says quickly, and he can see a little bit of horror surface in her face, “We’re going to go see a movie, that’s all. I just wanted to introduce you, since I’ve been with Tony for a while, now. He’s wanted to meet you, too. Haven’t you, Tony?”

Tony gives Nico another smile.

“I see,” Nico says. It’s been a while, hasn’t it, he thinks to himself, and lets his eyes narrow into the Protective Father’s Glare. “How long have you been going out, exactly?”

His daughter has the grace to look embarrassed. “T-Two months,” she titters, and Tony’s mixed expression makes it clear that it’s been two months of minimal action. “Actually, I was wondering if—if—may I stay out tonight?”

He draws in a breath, and he sees the teenage boy do the same.

Did he really think he could do this, now? Raising a teenager. Expecting it not to backfire on himself.

“Absolutely not. You’re barely sixteen.”

“But I’ll be with Tony the whole night.”

“That’s the problem.”

“Dad...”

You’ve called me Nico forever, Nico wants to say, you’ve called me Nico and you’ve never had any trouble stuffing words in my mouth and living with my habits, you’ve called me Nico while you were thirteen and learning how to memorize words for the spelling bee, you’ve called me Nico while you were in the shower asking me to grab you an extra bottle of Herbal Essences from the supermarket, you’ve called me Nico forever and a week and now you’re just going to go ahead and call me Dad, like it hadn’t meant anything to either of us. He could be pouting like a child right now. He wants to look back and check; there’s a missing paragraph somewhere, a missing golden rule of parenting and siblinghood, and it’s all bewildering enough to make him start to question his own motives. That he could end up sounding like an overprotective boyfriend. That maybe he’s not ready to give up being a big brother, yet. That, in another lifetime, Bianca could have easily dressed-up as Nico’s older sister and given him a chance for freedom and cigarettes and girls, instead of the other way around.

That it would not have made this any less complicated.

*

The first stop for Luke was Monaco. Second smallest city-state-turned-sovereign-country in the world, the first being Vatican City. Population exceeding 30000, of which a predominant 84 percent were wealthy foreign capitalists; the rest of it comprised of disgruntled natives, hungry beggars on the streets, and the Spanish. He had done a little research at a cyber café before slotting a discount ticket on Air France.

A bit of a cheery place, too cheery for him, but it’s all that’s left going for him, so he drops his bags in the closest motel with spiders in the bathtub and begins his hunt for lost treasure.

 _(after)_

  
But see, on the topic of traveling, Luke has her captivated in mere minutes. He’s been to Monaco and islands off Crete, Japan and Saudi Arabia, Germany and Australia. Meditating in the valleys of violet mountain peaks, traveling among elephants. Talking to a camel, sitting down with a ghost next to the Berlin Wall. And what he’d found, amidst all of it. How it had made him more supernaturally-inclined than ever before, more likely to believe in fairies and apparitions and shit. The treasure that he had accumulated from the adventure was enough to throw Thalia out of her chair.

“A regular Monte Cristo, you are,” she chuckled, climbed back onto his lap, “and me, I’ve just transformed into a gold digger. Almost unbelievable. This is just like something out of Narnia.”

“You couldn’t imagine,” he smirks, feeling real impressionability at the moment.

He recounts to her the tale of the Greek island then, of witnessing flavor in food and flavor in men and women, flowers in hair, sand in the surf and white beaches. Like keeping to the side of a mosaic, peeling off piece by piece the colorful glass and porcelain hooked onto the rims, tracing fingertips over the edge of a stranger’s fairy story. The Mediterranean and porn stars would mix well, wouldn’t they.

And all Thalia can do is stare, until something lights up in her eyes and she’s off like a firecracker.

“But I was there while you were there!” she throws her hands up in the air and starts giggling, “June, 2007? Fuck, now you’re probably going to tell me that you caught me skinny-dipping, too.”

Luke’s not sure how he’s supposed to respond to that.

 _(before)_

  
“So when you asked me to marry you,” Annabeth starts, “were you listening to what I was saying beforehand? Like, at all?”

“You were talking about Indian museums, right? And ceiling beams or something for the second level. Right?”

“And that’s all you heard.”

“What else did you say?”

“I’m wearing a new pair of glasses today,” she suddenly says.

He blinks, takes them off the bridge of her nose. “You are?”

“You didn’t notice, after all.”

“Am I supposed to notice these things?”

“…No,” Annabeth sighs, “I guess not.”

She’s trembling, wondering if she’s been assuming too much and keeping too much skepticism under lock and key. He wonders if she’s coming down with a fever. She’s never looked so stressed before. Rubs her forehead in concern, but she shrugs his hand off, retreats back into her drafting room and twists the knob on the door until he hears a click from the other side.

He wonders what he’s done now, and on the other side of the door, she’s wondering what he _hasn’t done_ , and why she feels so goddamn miserable inside.

(it’s like nothing really makes sense anymore)

*

Thalia meets Annabeth at the cafe at four. She sits down at a table, orders a latte and starts flicking through last month’s _Vogue_ on the bench. Passionate fashion, seasonal styles, oh-look-here a fur coat that costs the equivalent of the annual salary of a normal businessman. Perhaps her next conquest will purchase this one for her if she put on the handcuffs.

She looks at her reflection in the glass of the cafe and smirks to herself. She could easily have passed as a movie star (sex tapes notwithstanding). That trip to that Greek island might have done some good, after all. Despite the sand on the beach.

Annabeth arrives five minutes later, wearing a pink scarf that doesn’t match her shirt and day-old mascara, children’s lip gloss. Perches on her seat like a child. Trembling bottom lip—just like a child’s.

“You’re not going to a party in that, are you?” she says first, smoothing a hand through Annabeth’s oil-streaked hair, “What the hell did you do to yourself now?”

“I—I didn’t,” Annabeth whispers, more to herself than Thalia. She starts playing around with her fingers, tapping them against the table and looking around like a criminal, until Thalia finally notices that The Engagement Ring Isn’t There Anymore.

She decides not to make a comment about it.

Says instead, “Hey, you okay?” Examines Annabeth carefully, sips from her coffee cup and filters the lenses of the worldly-girl goggles as much as she can, “You want something to drink? I’ll keep it on my tab.”

And Annabeth nods, but only slowly, scoots forward in her chair with a loud scrape against the tiled floor.

“Thalia,” Annabeth’s lips tremble, “I don’t know what to do any more. I’m so fucked up. And Percy. He’s…He’s not…it’s like he doesn’t even…”

She doesn’t finish. Thalia doesn’t want to listen to her finish, either, so she just looks down at her hands and thinks about the air flow in the room, and how thick it’s suddenly become.

There’s something gross about coffee that she’s never really liked. It’s bitter, like chewing tea leaves; it’s all runny and flat-flavored when she drinks it at home; it leaves a chunky aftertaste in her mouth. Nothing good has ever come out of running on caffeine. Besides, she’d always wanted to be 5’7”. She’d once sworn that she’d never drink coffee, an oath that she’d taken with a bottle of decaffeinated green tea. But then she’d grown up and started living a life, read in a book that a girl stopped growing three years after her first period, and now she’s long-since forgotten all about trying to coerce herself into fitting the height; 5’6” isn’t so bad, anyway.

At any rate, she doesn’t mind it much anymore. She’s a cream and sugar kind of girl.

Annabeth, however, believes in nothing but black coffee. The thicker the better. The thicker and richer and more bitter, the more vibrant she’d feel, the more corporate asses she could kick around. It was Annabeth’s vice.

Thalia wonders what she’d get off calling something a vice, and finally decides that it might be swimming in Greek waters while screaming out her troubles into the sky.

(It was where Annabeth was the mature, adaptable womanly figure, where she won out over Thalia’s peculiar oral fixations and bad habits she’d never corrected since childhood. It was where Annabeth stood tall and glowing and headstrong on the middle ground and where Thalia would slink and stumble behind, trying to nudge her understanding this way and that until it would fit what had been Orthodox a decade ago.)

 _June, 2007_

  
The next stop is an island sitting in the middle of the Mediterranean, just off the east coast of the island of Crete. It’s a sandy, windy affair with a lot of bikinis and slim tummies floating on its shores, toenail polish glittering between the rays of the sun. Muscle-builders take their girlfriends surfing here in the gentle waves, while pubescent boys ogle at the cleavage spilling out from between scant pieces of swimsuit fabric. Angel’s map tells Luke that what he’s looking for is exactly on the opposite side of the shores he’d landed on, so he decides to go beachcombing and begin the journey the next day. Perhaps he’ll find a few necklaces somewhere, or (if he’s lucky) somebody’s Rolex.

In the middle of the night, Luke catches sight of a girl swimming in the seas.

Unsurprisingly, she isn’t wearing anything, save for a pair of designer sunglasses and a chain around her neck. Looks about as satisfied with her life as anyone could be. She ducks under the waves, picks up seaweed, and tucks it between locks of her hair. Opens her mouth and laughs openly into the night sky, white teeth flashing in the light of the moon. Arms paddle forward and back, nudging the foams of the wave like a sculpture. He thinks to himself that he might just be witnessing a goddess, or perhaps local deity in disguise, come from the heavens to experience worldly pleasure. Another moment and he’s sure that he must be experiencing an epileptic.

Another second, she’s gone.

He’s turned into a complete freak.

Later, he finds the box buried among a heavy pile of rocks, next to a seagull’s nest and a rocky cliff where some famous celebrity had once shot a film about angst-riddled lovers threatening to throw each other off the cliff to profess their undying love.

While he watches the waves lap against the beach, he contemplates joining them in their sojourn into heaven. Heaven or hell, he won’t try to take his pick. He just wants to leave.

  
 _(after)_

  
“Actor, huh,” his face twists into a strange smile (it makes Luke’s heart beat faster and faster and shit he’s probably going to get a heart attack if this keeps up), “So you’re an actor.”

“Yeah, I’m an actor. I’ve got actor friends, actor girlfriends, actor drugs, and all that lame shit.”

“Then you don’t want me,” he says, “You don’t want me at all.”

“Yes I do,” Luke Castellan says, whispers it softly and almost inaudibly into his ear, hands on Nico’s waist and a growing hard-on pressed into his thigh, “I want you here, I want you now, and I know you want me. It’s a simple enough question for you, isn’t it?”

  
 _(before)_

  
Nico visits the adoption center next-door to the foster home on Wednesday.

When the caretaker opens the door, a puff of disinfectant and talcum powder greets his nose. The room is small and cheerful: pale pastel walls and floral wallpaper—as if the orphans had needed some other vice to cheer each other up. A stack of books surround a commercial-sized suitcase, nylon rope, and plastic buckles.

“So who’s the oldest kid here?”

“Oldest?” Sister Cathy stumbles over her own words, “But—surely, you’d like a younger child.”

“No, ’m fine.”

Not if he isn’t going to live long enough and disappear far enough to see her through high school.

“A-Are you certain? There isn’t…?”

“It’s OK,” Nico tells her.

Sister Cathy tells him to wait by the door and keep himself busy with the baby magazines, and after standing there for a good fifteen minutes, there’s a girl. There’s a girl, dark hair and mismatched eyes, face that brought a sharp memory back into Nico’s mind.

“This is Mr. di Angelo. He’s the kind man who wants to adopt you,” the nun says, making her way back out the door, “Have your bags packed now, dearie, we don’t want to keep him waiting.”

“What’s your name?” he asks her first, taking her suitcase in his hands and feeling a ton of awkward for every second he stood there. He couldn’t have been more than ten years older than her. It would be like adopting a sister.

She bites her bottom lip, and he sees dread in her eyes. Didn’t want to be here either. “Bianca. It’s Bianca.”

“What about your last name?”

“Doesn’t matter, does it? I’m Bianca di Angelo, now,” she says. She tugs the suitcase out of his hands and drags it into the trunk, “And I’m thirteen. I can take care of myself.”

“So you are,” Nico says, “I’m Nico. I don’t really want you to call me father or anything. I’m not much older than you. At least I hope I look that way.”

(Did he say too much? Too little?)

Bianca turns sideways to face him and stare at the ground.

“Thanks, Nico. You’ve really…you’ve really helped me.”

*

Nagano is beautiful in the spring. There are fewer tourists around the urban area, because they are all gathered at the shrines to watch the spectacles and the sakura blossoms, but Luke finds it peaceful. Two blocks down and he finds a tidy, bite-sized inn with a concierge who speaks fluent English. Settled down into a room that had a view directly into the violet-colored peaks far away, he’s able to feel the breeze sway in from the window from across the peaks of the buildings. This is something that he’s never experienced before, this kind of inner tranquility, inner being. No small wonder that there are so many Japanese Buddhists around the world. If Luke could live this kind of life every day, then maybe he’d be at peace with himself, after all.

And suddenly, he’s starved with an urge to meditate. It’s a subtle bit of subliminal messaging, Annabeth had told him once, you miss and you hit and you suddenly know how to do it in the middle of cracking your head open on the wall. Like indirect proofs, whereupon you draw a curved line towards the solution instead of a straight line. Parabolic trajectory magnifying the experience a hundred-fold, currents and constants flooded by incongruity and ultimately, inner stability and full efficiency.

(Yeah, he’s not exactly sure he knows what she’s talking about, but it must be a rewarding exercise, so perhaps he’ll try it, see for himself.)

He sits down, cross-legged on the tatami mat in the middle of the room, closes his eyes and tries to clear his mind. It’s difficult at first; there are too many thoughts in too many places restrained by too much time and too many people telling him to stop, but he presses on.

*

(This is a clear, turquoise lake in the middle of the mountain, at the crux of the mountain peak. The only way to find this lake is if you were to climb up several cliffs and then down a steep wind shaft, followed by the frailest natural bridge in the world. But when you do find it, it’s the best place in the world. There are patches of wildflowers swirled around the eastern corner of the lake, collecting and scattering pollen across the paths of the world; algae and moss climb up the shores like jungle undergrowth. The people who see this place never want to leave it, but the lake disappears and reappears in different places around the world, the hallmark of ephemeral beauty that skips generations and years like a child skipping stones across a pond.

It’s a beautiful place, and he sees it now, as he’s sitting on the tatami mat with his eyes closed.

  
It’s a very beautiful place.

*

“Grover,” the shorter man extends an arm, “I’m Grover. I’ll be working the night shift. Noonday shifts give me gas, you see, and I’ve already had a bunch of peculiar cases like that.”

Percy grins.

*

Grover, as it turns out, has a whole collection of potentially self-endangering and illicit endeavors that he takes regular interest in. The next time Percy meets him, Grover is sitting on a cardboard box in the back-alley, practiced fingers rolling a heavy joint.

“Weed,” he gives out by way of explanation, “Schmidt told me it was grown in India. You know they always grow the best grass.”

Percy didn’t know. But it was probably a good thing to know, so he nods and takes a draft when Grover passes the joint to him with a happy, half-delirious sigh.

“So who’s Schmidt?”

“Schmidt? Oh, he’s my supplier. Longtime drinking buddy and confidante. What you want, he’ll get you. Good man, Schmidty.”

While Grover rambles on about Schmidt’s particular skill at finding the best phone sex lines, Percy lets the legitimacy of it all stew in his head, feels the slow, aphrodisiacal burn of marijuana soak through his veins. “Does he do housing?”

Grover stops for a second and eyes him under glazed eyes. “What?”

“House hunts. Does he do them?”

“Who, Schmidt?”

“Yeah. I need a new place to crash.”

*

As the days go on, Luke finds it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the photo shoots. He’s still fine with the crazy demands of the directors, but every time another flashbulb settles on him, he starts flinching and feeling his flesh burn underneath the glare of the light. He was shooting a goddamn desert film, and he didn’t have time for this.

Even the makeup artists notice it. One of the girls tells him to quit squirming, and is finally reduced to jabbing the mascara brush in his eye to make Luke concentrate. Another costume designer simply starts sticking pins in all the uncomfortable places until he begs him to stop.

There’d been an earthquake somewhere in the world and someone is dying and all Luke wants to do is go home and find Nico and curl up and sleep. He can sleep. He can only sleep.

*

The new girl at the grocery store is really pretty. She has blonde highlights in her red hair, and she wears miniskirts all the time that show off a delightful slip of skin before thigh-high stockings. And she’s got it in for Percy, as well, which just makes it all the worse.

Another day, she had invited Percy out for coffee during break and he’d gone along, pulling all sorts of excuses out of the box; he’d wanted to be polite, she was the one who’d asked him, she was simply too pretty to ignore, Annabeth hadn’t specifically placed an indiction on this kind of behavior.

She had asked him about his favorite color. Favorite novel, movie, hobbies, type of girl. He had dutifully responded to all of it, stirring in one sugar cube after another and feeling like he’d been put on as the star of some horrendous film about middle-aged singles dating. He’s only twenty-three.

“Percy,” she nudges his wrist with the lip of a tea spoon, looks up at his face from under her lashes, “Are you listening to me?”

“I have a girlfriend,” Percy blurts out suddenly, and now he’s probably ruined the premise of the dating movie on the spot.

He can tell she’s surprised, but she hides it by straightening up her back, “I-I wasn’t going to ask you,” she murmurs, tucks a lock of red hair behind an ear, and God she’s really, really pretty.

(But she does anyway. She’s been asking him if he’d had a girlfriend all along, asking him through smoky eye makeup, cheerful smiles, gentle flicks and tucks of the wrist. She’s asked, she’s here, and maybe she cares.)

After kissing her on the subway, Percy suddenly forgets her name.

*

Bianca learns how to spell “blitzkrieg” and “acquired” and “zephyr” without trouble. It is mostly the ones from the Slavic language that she is having trouble with, and she begs Nico to keep quizzing her, keep asking her how to spell this and that until the yellow booklet full of spelling words has crumbled in Nico’s hands and Bianca has landed herself in the National Spelling Bee.

She says she wants to make a difference. That people who weren’t the extreme nerds could stand out and win prizes, too. She’d make her difference.

The girls at the neighboring high school would sometimes call her a slut for no reason; they’d begin taunting her and giving her a hard time just so she’d fight back, shoot expletives and fists like a shotgun, tell them to go home and fuck their mothers. Bianca had never understood how to hold back, and Nico doesn’t have the heart to tell her to keep to herself, either.

It was different, to have a girl around who could fight for herself.

He wonders if, in another life, he should be allowed to congratulate himself for this.

*

“I’m home,” Percy says, and realizes that he’s speaking to an empty room.

Suddenly it occurs to him that he’s really, really pissed off. That he’s very likely going to start shooting his mouth off at the light fixtures and the sofa cushions. That he might want to start tearing the photographs and posters and those dumb building plans from the walls. That he might, just might want to reach into the medicine cabinet and chock up a dozen aspirin tablets. That he might want to shoot some vodka along with it.

That he might really want cause some severe physical, irreparable damage to himself.

Because he’s suffered enough, he really has.

And he doesn’t exactly know what it is, that really gets into him. Was he expecting her to be home, waiting for him? Was he expecting dinner on the table, candles lit on the windowsill and sweet-smelling flower petals scattered on the bed? A love song on the radio, popcorn in front of the television? (Perhaps he had, but what did it matter now, anyway?) Maybe he’d considered too much while being with her, as if that was anything likely, but there had been no concessions made and no legitimate notes passed in the hall, bills passed through congress.

And tomorrow, he’ll be passing in the deposit for the new apartment.

 _(before)_

  
Two blocks away from the supermarket, up thirty-three steps and through several rusty gates, there’s the door to the apartment, hanging by its hinges and looking older than the door to God’s house. Inside, it’s reasonably well-furnished. Moth-eaten furniture covered by linen, a set of limp armchairs and Victorian-style poufs standing vigilant guard among the tattered curtains. A wooden bookshelf in the back, a breakfast table and kitchen nook to the left. On the table, he spots a three-inch stack of smiling realtors’ faces in printed business cards. To the left of that, a dusty sign-up sheet that looked like it hadn’t been touched in the recent decade.

“It’s old, but very well-kept, dontcha think?” Schmidt says, stamping his feet against the rug. He stirs up a filthy cloud of dust and starts coughing into the air.

“Mm,” Percy agrees, taking a cautious step forward.

“The water and ‘lectricity’s still running from the last tenants,” Schmidt continues, running a finger over his dry lips, “and there! Fireplace! See it? They just had it cleaned-out by the folks down at the Salvation Army.”

He wants to question the ethics of asking the Salvation Army to clean out a fireplace, but almost instantaneously, he can see it. He can see it all. He can see Annabeth dropping the groceries and the heating bills on the kitchen counter, he can see her flopping down on an old arm chair, lifting her tired legs onto a pouf, picking up a book. He can see her dozing against the cushions on the mossy couch, hair in her face and smile on her lips. He can see himself, watching her and trying to imagine what she could be dreaming about.

He can see a bedstead near the window, linen sheets and wine-colored coverlet; he can see Annabeth perched on the edge of it; jittery and giggly and very much the girl he loves. He can see the curtains next to window. He can see himself, drawing up the curtains and brushing the bowl of tulips sitting on the sill. He can see the two of them eating at the breakfast table, pancakes and maple syrup in the morning, packing turkey bologna sandwiches for lunch, sharing a glass of red wine in the evening and speaking to each other in soft voices, soft voices because Annabeth wouldn’t want to wake the baby.

Their baby.

When did he start thinking about completely crazy shit like this?

  
 _(after)_

  
“Change for a fifty,” he says, throws five boxes of Trojans down on the counter as airily as he can manage.

“Shit, you having an orgy or something?”

“Something like that,” he mutters, bounces on the balls of his feet. Examines the candy rack and drops two tins of Altoids in front of the cashier, as well.

“Well, at least you’re being safe about it,” Percy half-smirks, marks the page on his bikini magazine with his thumb and some spit. He scans the merchandise one-handed and enters digits onto the number pad with the other.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The cash drawer opens with a mechanical wheeze.

“Hey, where’s your girl?” Nico asks.

(Not here. She’s not here, all right.)

“Your change,” Percy says distractedly, shuffles a few quarters out of the cash holes.

The doors of the convenient store jingle shut, and now Percy’s left all alone in the store with Mister the Epitome of Awkwardness leering expectantly over the front counter.

Percy bares his teeth.

Nico shrugs, tugs the plastic bag with the goods and the bit of paper receipt out of Percy’s hands. Gives the cashier desk a smart salute after a little bit of consideration. He’s tempted to check the expiration date on the condoms again.

(so maybe he kind of misses hanging out with Percy; maybe he misses a lot)

  
 _(before)_

  
When Nico comes back, Percy is the first to greet him. The meeting is entirely accidental, but extremely cheesy, by anyone’s standards. He gets off the airport shuttle, suitcase in one hand and mind uncharacteristically blank,

Hero’s come back.

“So. How was Barcelona?”

Barcelona? Oh, yes. He’d made a trip to Spain in the first few days. Seen the sights, kissed the women, exchanged a few broken sentences with a street vendor for want of a wooden carving in the shape of a local deity. (He’s still not very sure about what he should do with it.)

“I saw a Bengal tiger at a circus matinee.”

“That’s interesting.”

“And then I quit my job.”

“Big deal,” Percy scoffs, “I _lost_ my job.”

“I quit my job because my superiors somehow found out about…you know.”

“…”

“Yeah. Couldn’t top that one, could you?”

“…Are you sure it wasn’t because you were, you know, gay and stuff?”

“Dang, Percy, I never pegged you for homophobia.”

“I’m not! I swear I didn’t mean it—”

“You’re quite the insensitive prick, aren’t you?”

“If it isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.”

And then suddenly both of them start laughing. It’s crazed and creepy and it makes them both feel like super-villains, but it’s laughter, after all, it’s laughter that he hasn’t heard in a long time, and laughter is always good.

The people at the customs block stare at them both.

  
 _(after)_

Bianca gets into a fight on her second day at the public high school. Nico receives a message from the unified school district at first; it’s garbled over the line and he doesn’t understand until he hears the door open. Bianca is home, heavy scratch-marks on the undersides on her arms and a band-aid across her nose, tangled hair, cuts and scrapes all over the place. She kicks off muddy shoes on the carpet and collapses on the sofa with a soft groan. It’s not exactly what I’d call the best way to start the school year, is it, Nico’s about to say, but then the phone calls start pouring in. Are you really Luke Castellan’s lover? Have you corrupted him? Devil, you’re the devil. Go back to Russia. Go back to Korea. Go back to Mars. Your daughter attacked several of her classmates during lunch period; she was only stopped by three members of the faculty and the principle. We have suspended her for three days. Please let her reflect on her actions today; we hope we’ll be able to see her in better light upon her reentry on the school grounds.

He’s not exactly sure what he should be saying, at first, because it’s so sudden and Bianca looks so tired, he’s not exactly sure what makes him take action, but suddenly he’s racing for the door, checking the locks on the entry, securing the window frames and drawing the curtains, tacking up the black cardboard they’d used in the bomb threat. Throws a thick blanket around Bianca’s sleeping form and starts barricading the door with chairs, rope, and as many encyclopedias he can carry from the library. This isn’t going to work. He has to feel safer, he has to make sure none of them can come in and attack him, that none of them will find out where he is. He has to pretend that he’s dead. He’ll turn all the electric appliances off. The refrigerator, the television, the radio and the electric heating system. He fumbles with the switches, one by one by one by one, hears the click before he’s satisfied. He’ll turn off all the lights, too; make sure the switch in closet is closed on all its terminals. He’ll curl up on the floor. No, it’s not safe enough. He has to pretend that he’s dead. He has to make sure that he’s died. He’ll stop breathing.

He’ll stop breathing, and it will be all right.

*

They have a lot of sex against the wall.

Luke pushes his belly flat against the cold plaster, grinds until both of them are short of breath and grappling at each other. Fingers hook around waistbands, legs hook around legs. Tease at a nipple, a hot mouth carves a path down Nico’s spine. Red marks down Nico’s back, red marks everywhere, some of them bites and some of them not. The lube drips three drops on the carpet. Drip, drip, drip. One, two, three fingers up Nico’s ass, brush his prostate just a little off the mark until he’s arching his back, whining in the back of his throat and breathing heavily against the wall, and Luke is pressing kisses on his neck, his shoulders, his lips. Fingers hook on the inside and make him curse, gasp something intelligible; fingers ease Nico’s thighs apart, fingers that probe and flicker like the flame of a candle, leave him moaning for more. Touches him _there_ again until he’s trembling and shuddering and scrabbling for the wall. _Do you like that?_ Yes, fuck yes. He’s breathing hard, Luke’s breathing, breathing, just breathing. On his skin, a grin turns cold, and suddenly the fingers retract and he lets out a small pleading whimper that makes Luke hiss and the world spin. He can feel Luke’s hand move and tease the tip of his cock, and now he’s arching into the wall when he feels feathery brushes against the slit. Another short breath, and suddenly he’s full, he’s full up to the top and he knows that this must be what heaven feels like, this tingling in the hollow of his throat, the strangled growl that will burst any minute, the kisses pressed against his skin. And then it’s just fucking. Luke fucking Nico, Nico fucking Luke. Fucking Nico into the wall, fucking Nico against the door, on the sofa, on the rug, over a poster of Director X and Actress Z.

  
 _(after)_

  
“Lame fuck,” Luke says.

“Love you too.” He doesn’t lift his head.

(because when I’m waiting for you, five minutes might feel like an hour)

*

And this is what will happen:

Bianca will wake up, and she will throw-up in the toilet and discover that everything in the fridge has turned rotten from lack of a proper electric permafrost isobaric heating system. The particle accelerator in the television will have long died. She’ll check her watch and discover that she’s slept for two full days.

“Nico?” She’ll ask. “Nico?”

So she might wander around the house for a while, turn over the cupboards and maybe pass a wet cloth over the table because it’ll be rather dusty and she’s a bit allergic.

“Nico?” She’ll say again, and she won’t find Nico anywhere.

  


  
&

  
Yeah, once upon a time? Once upon a time had been the boy standing by the window, his fingers held up to the glass and the reflection of the stars in the sky, singing lullabies to the child in the armchair, singing in a slightly unhinged voice, unbounded and light like the pieces of silk in the sky. Once upon a time had been Percy and Nico, Nico and Percy, Percy making distasteful jokes and Nico laughing awkward laughs, political incorrectness, flamboyant debauchery under the afternoon sun. Indecent exposure that had landed the two of them three days and three nights taking turns flipping the newspaper at the police office. Insanity at midnight that had landed them restraining orders from the patent office. Karaoke bars, Two Less Lonely People in the World, old Carpenter tapes, sounding out foreign words on a bridge under the stars. Once upon a time, there had been a boy and a heart and a pretty bit of Desperation floating along the banks of the river, touching their souls once in a while, but never breaching the border. Hummingbirds sing; swallow raindrops to clear their throats, drain nectar from a hibiscus flower to sweeten the tune.

Annabeth Chase is a very beautiful flower.

 

*

 

They have dinner in the morning, and Percy can’t hold it in any longer, starts complaining about needing to find a job.

Nico rolls his eyes. “The only problem I see here, Mister Jackson, is your unnecessary attention to economic issues, towards which you pay no allegiance, nor any real concern. That; and your talent for assuming the qualities of a big fat schmuck.”

“Hey, that is not true!”

“You follow the goddamn _stock exchange_.”

“So? Doesn’t everyone?”

“Um. No.”

“I thought it was something intellectuals did.”

Nico plucks another pear out of the bowl and takes a large bite. “Tsk, tsk. Confusing the philosophic with the corporate again? What are you, individual versus the state?”

“Shut up. That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“You need to get laid, man.”

 

*

 

Luke is seated at his grandmother’s piano; his fingers are pressing notes against the yellow ivory keys—he’s _making music_.

“Wow, piano? Learning something new about Master Luke, every day.”

(It’s cheesy, but it works.)

The blonde man shrugs, lifts his feet onto Nico’s lap. “Pastiche. Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Bach. Drunken key-smashing in between.”

“Dude. You can’t fit a classical composer in with the romantics.”

“Yes I can.”

“It doesn’t sound right.”

“Fuck you. I’ll show you exactly what sounds right.”

 _(before)_

 

“Can’t you take care of yourself?” Luke mutters, shaking Nico back and forth, “What’s wrong with you, seriously? If I hadn’t climbed through the window, I swear to God you would have died.”

“Lemme go,” Nico mumbles, slings his arms around Luke’s neck and snuggles his head between Luke’s shoulders, “I don’t need you.”

I don’t need you at all.

 

 _(after)_

Luke slides him against the sofa cushions, easing Nico out of his shirt with one hand, the other still focused on palming Nico’s cock through the heavy fabric of his jeans. He keeps one leg hooked over Nico’s, even when they near the bed, and then falls over and positions himself above Nico. It’s what he wants.

It’s what Nico wants.

“Let me ride you,” Nico pants, grinds his ass against Luke’s erection.

It’s a moan of ecstasy. It’s a moan of ecstasy, because he doesn’t want to hear the sound of his heart breaking.

 

*

 

“Hummingbirds can’t sing.”

“Yes they can.”

“…”

“Dammit, I’m hard. Hey, wanna go again?”

 

*

 

Grover passes the joint back to Percy with a grimace. “It’s fucking messed up, that’s what it is.”

“Fucking messed up,” Percy repeats.

“Yeah. Fucking shitting messed up like fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“Girls? What g-girls? They’re all stupid. Dumb sluts. Don’t want to fuck, my ass. W-Who wouldn’t want a nice fuck?”

( _Annabeth_ , Percy thinks, Annabeth wouldn’t.)

 

*

 

Thalia leaves the modeling agency walking on clouds. They’d praised her, brushed cheeks with her, shook her hand and patted her on the head, they’d called her a real Standout Woman, and on top of that, the receptionist had _offered her candy mints_. Candy mints!

It simply doesn’t get better than this.

And with a smile, she thinks that she might be able to deal with this life, after all.

 

*

 

The bathroom walls in the clinic are shiny and pastel-colored. Each stall is tucked away into a private corner, hiding from the glare of the light and softened down so that each patient could do his or her business and not worry about some teenage mother’s kid crawling between the stalls and looking up people’s legs. Nico chooses the stall in the far right corner, next to a stand of cheerful fake chrysanthemums. Chrysanthemums, nobility for the Chinese, honor and homoerotic symbolism in Japan, the flower of November. Roots planted firm within the aristocratic culture. It would be Nico’s good luck charm. He reminds himself of this a couple of times before opening the stall door and sitting down on the toilet.

 

Takes a deep breath.

 

It’s just a urine sample, after all.

 

*

 

So she doesn’t think twice about it, plunges into the idealism and fallacy of the project without taking a second look back. She’s always been good about this, taking initiative and blasting apart the bushes in the maze and calling the hotlines when she’d heard the neighbors sexually harassing their milkmen. She plunges into it and takes to it like a bird to the sky, imagines that perhaps she’ll understand now, perhaps she’ll have fulfilled what she’d called herself here for, perhaps Luke will understand and Percy will understand and Annabeth will understand, and maybe they’ll forgive her.

And looking back, she thinks that she’s finally beginning to realize the scope of the world, of telling someone you love them and not wishing for anything in return, of knowing that you’ll be the one laughing in the end, tune to the end of all tunes.

It isn’t a bad idea.

It really isn’t a bad idea.

 

*

 

Nico descends the mountain in late October, when the birds finally begin to cease their chatter in the morning and he can feel the fallen leaves on the ground turn into mush, autumn washes away into snowflakes. It had eaten away the summer by the inch, and it was finally becoming condemned. When the rebirth would be, he’d never know.

The lake had been a lovely sojourn. Bit of a lonely place, not enough firewood to last in the earlier days of spring, but he’d talked to the birds and fed tree nuts to chipmunks, experienced his transience for all it was worth. It had been a surprisingly good feeling. At the very end of the last week, he had finally put away his entire stash, the last of the gold coins and land leases and plastic bags with his soul zipped inside.

And it had been a nice, lovely load to zip inside. He thinks he can enter the world, now, and maybe the world will decide that it won’t pass anymore judgment. Wishful thinking, but it’s what he has left.

 

*

 

The streets of Fresno aren’t anything special. Three houses down the block is the lady who had made him lasagna and grated parmesan cheese on top; she’d given him a little neurotic warning about the previous tenants, but Percy had paid her no attention; it’s all about the same to him, now.

 

*

 

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing Nico hears, “I’m sorry, Mr. di Angelo.”

And she looks really apologetic, he thinks, enough to forgive. Apologetic. Funny way to think about it, since she hadn’t really done anything wrong. He would have liked to blame everything on the messenger, but that wouldn’t have been fair, not at all. Yes, like that. He’ll keep digressing and pulling himself around on a leash until he can start blaming himself.

“Why are you sorry?” He says instead, “I didn’t accidentally sleep with you while I was on the aphrodisiac, did I?”

She doesn’t say anything back (he doesn’t really expect her to); hands over the paper with less conviction than he’d liked to have seen.

“I’m sorry,” she’s saying it again, “I’m sorry.”

Nico smiles back.

 

He isn’t sorry at all.

 

*

 

“You’re stupid,” Annabeth says, “You’re really, really stupid.”

“I know,” Percy says.

“But,” she says then, “I’ve never actively taken a stick to measure your stupidity, so I can only gauge it with mine.”

Was she admitting to something, now?

 _(before)_

 

She visits the supermarket the next day, takes a day off to keep her feet clean and her mind fresh. Her partner at the firm had just made a good show of telling their boss that her design was pure egotist and semi-ineligible, to which she had told him to go fuck his mother at home.

Manager told her to take a day off. You need it, Annabeth. Go treat yourself to something nice.

But that’s not what she needs. What she needs is someone to tell the dickhead to shove his own blueprints as far up his ass as it could physically go. And for a lightning bolt with no angle of incidence to drop directly over his head. What she needs is someone to keep her company in this mundane business, someone with a mind like her own. What she needs, right now, is a deli sandwich from a supermarket. She hasn’t seen Percy in a while, and she maybe kind of misses him.

So she makes a left at the next intersection and spots a corner supermarket by the public park; it’s open and there’s this weird door jingle that catches her ears. She’ll buy something to eat here, that’s what she’ll do.

 

 _(after)_

The modeling company turns out to be nothing but a bad joke.

Thalia takes another puff, hears but doesn’t listen, nods along to the photographer with pork for brains while he takes her through the positions. He scratches his chin and speaks to her like she’s too dumb to understand, which is fine by her. He’s drunk on his own narration, vies for her attention while simultaneously pillaging his own perspective, says that I Stand Amazed at the beauty of pornography (awfully strange where you find God, these days). His company has been Proudly Going Innovative for quite a while now, since the good old-fashioned years of missionary position and doggy-style. He’ll have none of that, nope; this is the generation of blooming lotuses, firecracker position and dolphin-style, a brand of what his pork brains refer to as Oriental Mysticism, “where the sex addicts of the 80’s are your spiritual gurus”. (Seriously, you find God everywhere in this day and time.)

And she’ll be damned, but spiritual gurus, her ass.

“Of course, we won’t be forgetting the bondage portion of the film,” he goes on.

She takes another puff on the cigarette and spills the smoke in his face. “Yeah?”

“Can you take patent leather? Belts? Twenty?”

 _Only twenty?_ She scoffs. The standards of this company were low enough to make her want to jam a burning cigarette over all of their work papers and her contracts, smite some gasoline and watch the flames boil up into the air. No small wonder. The pornographic industry had been taking a dive for a while. No fucking way. _No fucking way_ is Thalia Grace, poster girl for the porn industry, no fucking way is Thalia Grace working for the shitheads _here_.

(“Sure I can,” she says instead, dips the menthol butt in the ashtray, lights another cigarette with two fingers and one thumb. “I’ll take forty if you want.”)

He beams.

(This must be her cue to clock the shotgun at his forehead.)

No one bothers to read the job description anymore.

 _(before again)_

 

Annabeth takes her time picking out the type of watercress that she wants on her sandwich. The girl on the serving shift ( _Hello! My name is Rachel_ ) was really eager about it, too, popping purple bubble gum between her teeth, jabbing a finger here or there and giving recommendations worthy of a five-star restaurant. There’s our special cheese for the day, the pepper jack. You could try the dry salami with it, we brought it in this morning and it’s still fresh, ‘cause you know we stock up on that stuff once every three days. Boss says it keeps just as well, and we can’t be too picky ‘cause we’re so small, you know?

When she smiles, Annabeth smiles back.

(Wonders when she had last been happy like her. She’s only a little envious.)

When she walks to the back of the store to look for the tapioca machine, she hears a shriek from the serving girl, and a cold chill run down her spine.

“Percy! About time. Were you jerking off back there or something? You were supposed to relieve me ten minutes ago!”

“Sorry, meant to come earlier,” Annabeth hears her boyfriend say, and when she spins around she decides that she had definitely chosen the wrong store to walk into.

 

 _(and after)_

The empty boxes pile up on the shelf, and Nico counts fifteen of them. Trojan, Lifestyles, Crowns, MAXX, Kimono. All there, storybook font and clean-cut instructions on the labels, evidence for sex addicts and the over-precautionary. He’s unsure which category he falls in, now, and truth be told he really doesn’t want to know.

Fact remains, there’re too many, and definitely not enough. Maybe he should go buy a few more boxes, just to be safe. Maybe he should just raid a factory in Thailand and be done with it.

Fact remains, he’s still worried about Luke.

 

*

 

Thalia takes one look at the brands on the shelf and suddenly starts imagining herself walking out of this place and into the nearest McDonald’s, ordering hamburgers with a credit card and puking into the sinks, shoving French fries into her mouth and gagging rainbows. She’s never puked a rainbow before. What would she have to eat before she could produce a rainbow, anyway?

L’Oreal dominates over smaller boxes of Clairol and Revlon. The smiles and white teeth of the models sit triumphant on display in the corner aisle, grins so wretched and full of simper that Thalia starts fucking all of them in her mind, fucking them with the silicon dildo she had worn in the film last night. The blonde one would have been a flimsy fuck, especially with that angular face. Mask of a skeleton—a Voldemort body as well, probably. No physique equates to poor stamina. She’d bet good money on small curves, shadow and/or plastic boobs, and a whiny complex. The brunette looked okay; she’d probably last more than two rounds and maybe even a good blow, even though her hair would be ruined by the end of it. (Irony for the company, seriously.) But no, Thalia had saved the best for last. The black girl on the corner, shadowed by hordes of puny white models, she was the one that would have been worth the most of Thalia’s time. Her eyes gave it all away, it was the well-fucked look, glimmer of a confidence that had not been abandoned under the glare of a flashbulb’s light.

Yeah, that would be worth some of her time.

She stares back at the display and bites her lip.

And being the hypocrite she’d written herself out to be a million years ago, Thalia plucks the blonde girl off the shelf.

 

*

 

He prepares the place at five ‘o clock, half an hour before Luke’s arrival. Bianca had pretended to notice nothing, booking a camping trip with Tony the night before (in a fit of fatherly love or whatever else it could pass as, Nico had sent her off with a 15-pack of Kimonos); she told him she would call and then there was the honking of a Jeep horn and his daughter of four years was off to fuck the three days and three nights away.

Twenty minutes before, he sprays the place with a can of Febreeze. Too much salt and sweat and semen in the air for his liking. Too much of everything.

Fifteen minutes before, he showers, scrubs himself clean of whatever shame he had divested of himself before and pretended he didn’t have, scrubs with a small towel until his skin is scraped raw and red. Shaves what nonexistent hair he’s grown on his chin, climbs out of the bathroom looking like a plucked chicken. Keeps himself occupied with Jane Austen on the sofa. The shampoo smells too old; it had been caked in two-year old soap and he’s not sure if he should be worried about it or not.

Five minutes before, he puts down the novel and starts pacing.

 _(what am i going to do what am i going to do what the fuck am i going to do)_

 

*

 

Thalia skims the instructions on the label and takes advantage of the bonus tube of hair cream that it had come with. Considers streaking her hair instead of full-on dye (there should still be tin foil in one of the kitchen cupboards, unused from her last picnic five years ago), but that would just be cowardly. She has no desire to follow out her plans with cowardice.

So she cuts her hair first, lines the scissors up to her hair and admires the view, flash of silver against chestnut brown. She’d always loved her hair. Her mother had told her not to brag about it, had even told her that it wasn’t anything special, but she’d continue to like her hair, twine her own fingers into it and wash it like it was her own child. There’s something absolutely dark and mellifluous about it, reminded her of the earth in the garden and how easily it crumbled beneath her feet. Sometimes, her hair would shine on the inside and other times, it would reflect the sun. More than once, she has caught herself wondering if her mother could see its reflection, all the way up in the heavens, see its reflection and appreciate it for what it’s worth.

She loves her hair.

She loves it so much that she’ll cut it off and pile it in the trash.

It’s thick on the blades at first; there are so many chunks of it and everywhere at once, so she has to hack at it and chop at it and squish locks of it together and split them up in awkward places. She tells herself that it’ll look better later, starts trimming it ferociously when it begins to look like a train wreck. Turns on Luke’s old electric razor and slices it up the nape of her neck, checks through two opposite-facing mirrors to make sure that she doesn’t nick her skin, shapes the roots and ends of her hair until it looks halfway-there. Her hair is like a warrior, like a river with rapids. Provoke it, and she’ll fight back. She’ll try to make your life hell while looking presentable, no matter how you mutilate her, no matter how well you try to control her. Her hair is like a Baltic country.

(She wonders if she had been intrinsically masochistic.)

After the dye job, she looks at herself in the mirror. Examines her eyelashes, the bridge of her nose, the bend of her lips. So her cheekbones hadn’t suffered any damage.

It would be a new look for the new year.

And she’s so happy she could cry.

 

*

 

(See, Thalia is a real hummingbird. She’d flitted around flowers too much, spilled her heart into empty shot glasses, taken too much of the nectar from the plants to keep her hands clean. She’s broken, she’s been broken for two years, but somehow she doesn’t really mind being broken, because she has the most fun this way. It’s so much fun.

So much ridiculous fun.

And true to her thoughts, to the expectations of the world, true to everything and nothing at all, the girl in the mirror starts to cry.)

 

*

 

When Percy finally spots her standing in the snack foods aisle, Annabeth can only stare. The pieces of dust had long settled by then, the horses and their prospective riders had already taken shelter in the mountainside cave and she had already left them to their own devices, drawn the curtains on the show and stashed away the last of her dignity. So she stares. She stares and stares and stares, tries to imagine the words that he’ll try to use to cover up that kiss, imagines walking out of this place and going back to their apartment, imagines packing her bags and leaving once and for all, psychotic bills passed in Congress, notes passed in the hallways, YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED IT LOOKS LIKE ANNABETH CHASE AND PERCY JACKSON FINALLY BROKE UP.

 _There really isn’t much to say any more, is there_ , she thinks, and realizes that she’s said it out loud before she could stop herself.

Percy continues to look at her like he’s looking at a ghost, and what joy, she must have really died and gone to hell, then.

 

*

 

Luke arrives five minutes late with a bouquet of something in his arms, but he never gets past the rest of his sentence, because he’s already being dragged in by the arm by Nico and feeling particularly undignified.

“What’s going to happen now?” He asks, when Nico recounts his adventures at the free clinic.

Nico is taken aback, and the way his shoulders scrunch up shows through, “I-I. I don’t really know.”

“Is there something I can do?”

Now both of them are quiet, Luke is staring weirdly at Nico and Nico is staring weirdly at his hands, both of their fixations blinding and unmistakably borderline insanity. Nico half-shrugs and half-coughs, feeling vexed and uncertain and he’ll be damned if they’re the same thing. This type of scene is always supposed to work out in the books.

 

*

 

They end up having sex anyway.

Luke kisses Nico long and hard, presses every inch of his body against Nico’s and brushes his long fingers through Nico’s hair, doesn’t break the kiss at all in between strokes, kisses Nico like it’s his last breath on earth. Sweet and slow, they’ve got all the time in the world, and all of his time is in Nico’s hands. He unbuttons Nico’s shirt slowly, searching for a spot on Nico’s chest to tap the tips of his fingers. He knows this body so well now, well enough to know where Nico shivers, which part of his abdomen will make him moan soft and buck hard. He folds into Nico’s body, lifts him up until Nico is sitting on the kitchen counter. Nico’s legs curl around his waist.

And Nico, he doesn’t know what he’s doing any more. He doesn’t know what he wants to do, but he’s faced with a nice kiss and a gentle bit of skin, and he embraces it; maybe it’s all he has left.

Luke kisses him again, more slowly and softly, presses his lips against Nico’s chin and his throat and his neck. Presses lips against his jugular, his collar bones, the rest of his body, searching and feeling and smiling and humming. Nico fists his shirt and kisses him back, rolls his hips against Luke’s and feels himself growing hard. It’s kissing, only kissing, but he’s kissing Luke.

And this is exactly what Nico had been afraid of getting into. Unrepentant, no reluctance, looking into Luke’s eyes and seeing nothing there but himself, looking into Luke’s eyes and feeling something strange and unsightly bubble up from his stomach and into his chest, feels himself breathing the air and smelling nothing but Luke, feeling the rise and fall of Luke’s chest. The scent is fresh and beautiful and bright. It’s a scent that smells like love.

It can’t be love.

 

*

 

 

Grover has a second job at a place the local party-goers call Club Half-Blood, where he mixes drinks behind a wooden counter for a ruddy group of diehards with obsessive disorders involving Greek mythology, dyslexia and ADHD. Half of them were the recovering addicts from first-person shooting games, and the other half were completely focused on table-dancing and swaying their limbs to any beat they could get their hips on. You’d fit right in, he tells Percy, they’d just love you and hate you enough for you to be their hero. Hell, I bet you could even save the world some day and that’ll really prove it to them.

So, in light of the half-compliment and his own desire to get piss-faced for a discount price, Percy agrees to head down there and check it out some time. Club Half-Blood needs some new blood, once in a while.

It was the beginning of a descent to find Annabeth Chase.

 

*

 

Two hours ago, Luke had told him to pack enough clothes and toothbrushes for four days and four nights, that he’d be there to pick Nico up and they would go somewhere. It’s been two minutes after two hours, and Nico starts to feel like a bitchy girlfriend for waiting for Luke without anything in his hands. He can’t go. He’s going to die. He can just feel it. Most of the psychologists will write it off as delusional and symptoms of the Factitious Disorder, but he knows his own body better than anyone else; he’s dying and he knows it.

Luke’s beat-up American car pulls up to the curb in another ten minutes. He doesn’t even bother to open the door and get out, honks the horn impatiently, rolls down the passenger window and whistles through his teeth.

Like Nico was his dog or something.

“I’m not going,” Nico yells, and he hopes that Luke catches the words when he turns around to go back into the apartment, but the next thing he knows, the car door slams, a pair of arms forcibly fold around his waist, a hot breath runs down his spine.

“Idling the car increases a substantial amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, you know,” Luke whispers, and Nico glares like he’s never glared before, as if Luke had ever cared about global warming; as if he didn’t only want an excuse to sound intelligent, as if he shouldn’t just fuck off, right now before there was violence. He was not insane enough to fall for this one, yet. Luke only makes it worse by turning Nico around with one arm and burying his other hand in Nico’s hair, pulling him down the building steps.

“’m not going,” he says, voice muffled in Luke’s shirt, “Geroff me, you psycho.” He grinds his heels into the pavement, holds back and tugs the other way when Luke pulls at his hair. (And you thought Nico di Angelo got Stockholm Syndrome that easily, you ass.)

“You leave me no choice,” Luke sighs, and he hoists Nico into the air (like he’s a real lightweight, like Luke was a body-builder. Like he needed to be treated as an incompetent before he’d really died). Nico aims a kick at Luke’s head and misses, starts hollering bloody murder and zounds and _YOU’RE NOT MY DAD_ until he feels something warm slide up between his legs.

Oh, _hell_ no, Nico thinks, before his thighs start trembling and he’s cursing all of the deities in the world, there is no God in this world, and Luke’s grinning; his hand has found a nice piece of ass to stroke, _there is no fucking God_.

He resorts to screaming. “Fuck you! Fuck you and your whole family. Fuck your friends and your nasty complex. Fuck you fuck you FUCK YOU.”

“Rather you didn’t,” Luke whispers conspiratorially, wiggles an eyebrow, “I’d rather you save all the fucking for me.”

“You’re the not the one who’s HIV positive, asshole,” Nico snaps.

“Ouch. So my love doesn’t count anymore?”

Nico spits in his face.

Luke spits back.

At least they’re even.

 

*

 

“Thalia.”

“Thalia.”

“Thalia?”

 

*

 

The room is kind of cold now, Thalia thinks to herself, really kind of cold. A bit like that time she’d turn on the fan in the middle of December. She’d felt the cold sink into her body like a second layer of skin, sticky and somehow sweet-smelling, like a rotting pile of murder victims. Yeah, cold like that. Cold like popsicles in January, licking icicles with the top of your tongue, french-kissing Luke on a Ferris wheel. Cold like that. Cold enough to burn a hole through her heart.

She wonders if she should do something about this cold. But something tells her that, even if she had bothered to turn on the gas stove, she’d still be freezing inside.

And she can admit to it now—she might be jealous, really jealous of Annabeth, in the way that she can never be jealous of Nico and Percy, jealous not because it’s all she can do; in Annabeth’s hands, her fear of the love complex had been vaporized, taken away and demolished with the rest of her fears. No, she was jealous of Annabeth, simply because Annabeth knew how to be happy, she knew how to carry on a conversation without second-guessing the other person, she knew how to relax and find beauty in the world and not the man.

She loved Annabeth for it as much as she was jealous of her.

 _(and before)_

 

A pile of game controllers and wires fall on her lap and Thalia doesn’t even look up to know that it’s Luke and Nico here to crash her party. And oh goddamn it. It’s Percy fucking Jackson.

“Looks like the whole gang showed up,” she says as Nico sits down next to her, sucks on her Menthol as fast as she can before Luke tugs the stick out of her mouth, running the smoldering tip under the kitchen tap with a look like she’d stepped in someone’s shit.

“No smoking when I’m around.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Thalia says back, and starts rubbing Nico on the back with her empty hand. The boy curls into her hand like a little puppy. Nico’s always so cute.

“It’s Halo 3,” Percy explains, “and I still have the highest score.”

“You _had_ the highest score,” Nico retorts, “Shooting you down today, motherfucker.”

“Hey, who’s the real motherfucker here?”

“I’m not anyone’s fucker,” Luke says, slips a small smile and an arm around Nico’s waist (the gesture warms Thalia, and it’s only strange because her heart is beating at a strange tempo), “I’m just here to save the world.”

“Pfft. Been here, done that,” Nico rolls his eyes. “We don’t need another Jesus,” Percy says at the same time.

“Who knows?” Luke laughs, “I’m certainly built better for martyrdom than you, Percy Jackson.”

And Thalia has to smile to herself. They’re here, they’re in her house and they’re arguing and being immature, but they’re here and they’re saving the world. They’re saving the world, one video game at a time.

And she’s relieved. She’s really, really relieved.

 

 _(now after)_

They arrive at the Grand Canyon sometime in the early morning with stars trailing after the exhaust pipe of Luke’s car; they arrive under the impression that it’s night time, because there are no lights on the roads and the birds are only half-awake. Nico still has a frown caked in his face and Luke is driving, chafed somewhere between the boundaries of being half-asleep and half-inebriated. The radio dial broke halfway through the trip, and Luke had long since discarded his disc player for a place to keep booze in the car.

Safe driving, safe fighting; that’s his motto.

They enter through the northern exit, and probably because of the electrical company’s rigging in the dead of the night, all the road lights had been turned off and they’re left staring at each other, staring at into the night, looking at the sky and watching the clouds run and tumble across the lip of the canyon. It’s an enormous geographical wonder, stamped and tamped down by horse hooves and waterfalls, dry and cracked like the skin on a grandmother’s forehead. Arizona had never appealed to him like this. He feels an urge to step down, 6000 feet down into the canyon and let the river take him away, lift a finger through the slipstream and feel the stars crash down around his shoulders. The utter silence of the place makes him want to shout, to scream until his lungs are sore, fall into the sky and remember life when it was still there for him to live it. Because here, he can really see the sky.

 

Because here, he can fly.

 

Luke pulls his arms around him, and they look at the stars together, he counts the constellations, watches the sky turn bright and the lights fade and the first hikers begin their descent.

 

He can really fly.

 

*

 

(Five years ago: Monaco, 3:37 pm, side of the highway that’s facing the sun. It’s quiet and lonely, and the man tells Nico that he has money sealed away in a corner of the world. He has wandered among unknown men, seen stories and legends and relived battles and fierce days. Nico faces the north, the man faces the south. So it’s a casual encounter, a missed connection. Somewhere off to the side, a cell phone rings. He slips out of his clothes like he’s in a dream and playing with a crime. He fucks and they fuck, his breath is stolen away from his lungs and his limbs are flat, pale against the sun. And the man tells him that he has a nice fortune made, that he’ll pay it all for this last day on earth; his time is up, and so is the rest of Nico’s life. I want to die, he hears in between fucks, _I want to die I want to die I want to die_. Humans possess weak immune systems, even without virus and hunger and disease. All it takes is a heart and three words to shatter your pride.)

 

*

 

“Thalia?”

“Thalia?”

“I’m right here, Annabeth. I’m right here.”

 

*

 

The party at the grocery store is already in its twilight-zone mode when Luke and Nico arrive. Grover’s the one who spots them first, bellowing something obscene before he promptly sloshes beer down Nico’s shirt with an exaggerated bow of welcome. There’s music, there’re opened boxes of graham crackers and Pepperidge Farm from the snack shelf, people Nico doesn’t know are dancing and Thalia’s there, chatting up men and women and batting her eyelashes with the air of an aristocrat. Annabeth is sitting on the counter with a licorice straw sticking out between her lips. Somewhere next to her, Percy is sitting on a stray chair, looking at Annabeth and then back at the door, weighing his chance of survival and circumstance with each glance.

Nico picks up a beer from the stack riding on Grover’s back and pops it open with a click.

“So wait. What the hell are you doing?”

“WE’RE PARTYING. IT’S A PARTY. PARRRY. TEE. WITH BOOZE AND TITS. SEE THE TITS?” Grover shouts, sloshes more beer down his own shirt this time, and now he starts to drag Nico and Luke around to the back of the store.

It’s a mess of overturned chairs and shelves of food that have been ransacked by hungry dancers. A shelf of feminine products and shaving cream had been pulled to the side to reveal a dance floor, speakers ramming out dance beats on the side. There’s even a disco ball floating above their heads, and Nico really has to give them some more credit; they’ve really managed to ruin Percy’s work reputation forever.

Thalia shows up, then, smoky-eyed and swaying under alcohol. And even though both of them know that she’s no lightweight, she really looks more drunk than displeased, and definitely more daring than cautious, because the minute she sees them, she gives both of them a big smile, and then she plants a kiss on Luke’s mouth, right in front of Nico and right in front of everyone else. She’s planned it well, she has. Hell has broken loose.

“Holy fuck, it’s Luke Castellan!”

“Really? God, what the hell would he be doing here? Stupid dick.”

“Oh my God oh my God!”

“Ask him if he’ll sign my boobs.”

“Do you have any more lipstick?”

“LUKE CASTELLAN, GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE,” Percy roars.

 

*

 

And while he’s staring at the stars, he can see the constellation in the sky. Unclear and wobbly at first, as if the stars were adjusting themselves into the correct path, but another minutes, it’s clear like water droplets falling on the grass.

A hummingbird, flying through the stars, picking up a splash of light from the sun and a prickle of ice from the moons around Jupiter. It’s diving through the sky, warming up in its flight, flying against the celestial traffic on the star-swept stage and it’s dreaming, it’s dreaming of his memories and he remembers. It’s the same rainy day. It’s the same lake in the middle of the mountains. It’s the same log cabin, the same girl wearing the same white clothing, pieces of wildflower slipped under her red hair, the same girl telling him that she would see him again in Barcelona, telling him not to worry about feeling lonely, because she would find him soon and she would be a part of his family, that she was oracular, a real fortune teller, that’d maybe she’ll find a little more mysticism in his life than he had thought. Rachel Elizabeth Dare, here to enlighten and turn your life on its back.

The hummingbird sings.

 

*

 

Percy tries his best to explain it to his manager the next day. He’d planned all sorts of excuses, and he’d actually bothered to write them down on a piece of notebook paper today. He couldn’t lose this job, not after losing his life to a girl and losing the remainder of his sanity to a freaky bit of drug.

But his manager doesn’t come to work that day. Nor the next.

Rachel helps him clean up the mess in the morning. She grumbles something about starting to keep tabs on his habits, and Percy smiles apologetically; he doesn’t have anything more to say than the next person.

 

*

 

Luke isn’t nearly as lucky. He’s yelled at, pummeled at, frowned and leered at, and is almost carted off to the hospital ward by what was very likely an assassination attempt from one of the porn industry’s hired hit-men. He visits the Salvation Army down the road the next day and purchases a bullet-proof vest. Never could be too unwary of attack.

 

*

 

Bianca comes back from her camping trip three days after the party, her clothes ripped and bleeding from scratches. Upon closer examination, Nico discovers that’s she’s breeding spores of poison ivy in her hair, and she’s laughing something funny, mumbling incoherency about a giant mechanical contraption that had swallowed Tony alive, that she’d run home and she never, never wants to leave Nico, ever again.

She’s about to break, he sees it, she’s going to break.

He’s an awful father.

He can do nothing but pick her up, sling her over his shoulder and drag her into the bath. He’s her dad, whatever Bianca may think, he’ll be her dad until the end of her days, and he’ll subscribe to taking care of her forever, simply because he loved her as much as he would love anyone else. In the bathroom, he tugs the dirty pieces of cloth off around her arms and cuts open her bra with a kitchen knife. It’s trapped in her back and tangled through a bunch of thick pieces of grass; he’s surprised it hasn’t cut off her circulation completely. Fills the tub with water and bubble bath, purple bubbles, she’d always liked purple bubbles, takes off the rest of her clothes for her and lifts her into the bath.

She’s silent at first, silent and soothing and every way the doll she’d never been. She speaks to him about the tiger lilies Tony had picked for her by the road, the In ‘N Out they had stopped by on the way to the site, the boys who had flirted with her and the punches Tony had thrown. She speaks to him about perverts hiding on the freeway and the free breakfast she’d never tasted at the homeless shelter. She says all of this with a straight face, smiles at Nico like she’s still a young girl, like she’s still reading high school love stories and she hasn’t grown out of her training bra yet, prepubescent Lolita staring into the gaping cavern of Humbert, she says all of this with her own brand of grace, little smiles and whispers and splashes of bath water on his clothes, and then she’s laughing and laughing and now she’s bursting into tears.

 

*

 

“I’m waiting out for my happy ending,” Percy tells Annabeth, one year three months five days seven hours later, “I’m waiting for it.”

And Annabeth can bring herself to say it. “You’re still waiting?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

Another three hours later, Thalia spots a hand-delivered wedding invitation sitting in her mailbox.

 

*

 

Near the country of Jordan, Luke encounters a camel tied to a fence. The camel’s owner has already neglected the beast for over two days, choosing to spend his time with the women in the brothels down the street, but Luke had been watching over the camel in that time, using it as an opportunity to remember and meditate and look for the last link to the puzzle in his pocket.

The camel chews on stubbly straw, leans against the wooden picket while Luke places a hand on the other side of the fence.

“Hot today, isn’t it?” he suddenly hears a voice saying, looks around and wonders when he sees no one there, and realizes that the words had come out of his own mouth.

“I’ve wondered for a while about this,” Luke goes on, surprising himself, “but why do camels down here only have one hump on their backs?”

The camel blinks back.

And there’s something extremely irrational, off-scope and insane about this, but he presses on anyway, “Oh c’mon, don’t ignore me. At least tell me why.”

A beat. Luke stares at the beast, and it stares back. They look at each other for the longest time, until the camel suddenly opens its mouth, revealing decayed, yellow teeth and long strings of coffee-colored saliva.

“I’m a camel, and you’re a man,” the camel tells Luke, “and for me, that is certainly enough reason to ignore you.”

(It’s because he’s dehydrated, that must be why. He’s dehydrated. He’s in a state of delirium. _This isn’t real._ )

“So what about your hump?”

The camel lifts a split hoof in the air and shakes it. A small pile of sand falls on the ground with a puff of hot air and Luke feels his skin itch. The creature throws him a bewildered look, “Whatsa hump? If you’re talking about the layer of fat on my back, we don’t call those humps. Don’t think I don’t know how derogatory you humans can get with the different parts on your own bodies. Those are not humps, no sir, I’m a male camel and I am very well-endowed, thank you very much.”

“You, I…what?” Luke mumbles, and the camel snorts.

“From the _back_ , you dumb bastard. I mean my loins. Y’know. Genitalia, wee-wee, penis-phallus-dick, whatever it is you men call your pride? Yeah, here, lemme turn around and let you look. Yeeeah, here. See the balls? Yeah, you see ‘em, dontcha? You can touch ‘em if you’d like. I don’t kick unless you spit in my face. And there. Proof of my masculinity. I’m actually pretty big for an Arabian camel, you know. See? You only wish yours were as big as mine…”

The animal stops talking at this point, because his owner is back and Luke is slumped against the fence, telling himself to stop daydreaming, that this is starting to become ever creepier than science fiction; he tells himself this while pawing his hands against the sand in the ground. The owner pays for his camel-sitting in paper bills, asks Luke what’s wrong, but Luke shakes his head, tries to spit out as many broken Arabian phrases he knows that can somehow relay the meaning, “There’s no point anymore because I’m totally fucked, man.”

The Arabian owner and his Arabian camel leave, and Luke is still digging against the sand with his fingers, continues to dig even though he’s not exactly sure what he’s looking for, he’s crazy, he’s ruined it all, he doesn’t have anywhere left to go, he digs and digs until he sees a glint of metallic faith flash around his head, around the sun and back through the atmosphere, sees it and feels his head spin and shit

it’s _the gold_ , it’s his Angel’s gold, all four-hundred-forty solid kilograms of it.

 

*

 

“Oh, _Christ_.”

Thalia Grace, dropping paper grocery bags on the ground with a loud thump of her heart.

“Jesus, Luke, if you’re going to cheat, can’t you do it in someone else’s bed?”

“I’m…sorry.” Nico mumbles.

The girl only laughs. “Sorry? Why the hell are you sorry?”

“ _You’re_ the porn star,” Luke points out.

“Nope,” Thalia says, “With this kind of thing—finding your boyfriend fucking another man? I’m actually a little turned-on. You boys down for a threesome?”

Nico gapes. Luke sighs. (Thalia smirks at her own cleverness. She could probably win an award for this someday.)

 

*

 

Nico bites his lips, and promptly decides to throw away his dignity. “Look, I kinda fell in love with you.”

Luke smiles, bemused. “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“You _are_ an ass.”

“I’m serious. What are you going to do?”

“I…” He licks his lips. “I’m going to continue loving you until you love me back.”

Luke takes him in his arms, smirks into Nico’s hair. “Well, that’s certainly a plan.”

 

 _(don’t you know I do? I do, I do, I do)_   
_(and now?)_

 

“Please don’t die.” Luke whispers in Nico’s ear, “Please, please don’t die.”

“Too late, I’m already dead,” he cracks a smile.

“Be quiet. You’re gonna make me cry.”

And he has to laugh. “Luke Castellan doesn’t cry. He doesn’t give a shit about…about anything, remember?”

“Be quiet. Be quiet, be quiet.”

“You be quiet.”

“I love you. I really do. If you die, I’ll never forgive you.”

“It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

The world is a big, scary place. He’s been scared; dying is scary and even though he’s played around with Death before, it’s merely gnawed at the back of his mind, clawed at his throat with pale talons, glared at him through the lens of a kaleidoscope; this time there’s no turning back to look because he knows he’d only turn into a pillar of salt. Now it’s enough. It’s all he needed to hear. It’s been enough, since the once upon of time and the bridge under the stars, since the grocery store house party and saving the world one computer game at a time, since the rain of invisible fingers and Rube-Goldberg machines, since he met Luke Castellan, since he saw stars. A tangent line to the circle in his life. I’ll live in your heart if you stay in mine. It’s been enough since the beginning of the world and the end of his life.

It’s enough, and he’s had enough.

He swears he can hear the hummingbird singing in the sky.

 

 _(before that,)_

“If you want money, I have about three trillion dollars in gold, stashed in every nook and cranny around the world. More than enough for a career start-up. Find you a few producers and second-rate directors, buy you a few drinking buddies down in Hollywood,” the boy says, shuffles hands in his pockets and produces a slightly crumpled card. There is a carefully drawn map on one side, and small print on the other.

(And he can stare all he wants, but Luke isn’t going to look away, and once he realizes it, he sighs and puts his palms up in the air. Heavy raindrops crash around them on the sidewalk and over the dome of Luke’s clear umbrella, and when he gives the instructions, he knows that Luke can barely hear the words as they slip out of his mouth.)

“W-Wait.”

“Yeah?”

“W-What’s your name?”

He grins, watches it flashes across Luke’s eyes. “You can call me your savior, if you’d like.”

“You…but how will I find you again? To thank you. I mean, this is huge, I can’t just—”

“I don’t need anything from you,” Nico says, brushes him off with a wave and a turned back. “I’m transient, after all.”  


  
And he’s wanted to get rid of it all for a long time. He’s wanted to live life from the beginning, clean his slate and shoot amnesiacs into all of his secretaries. He’s wanted this forever, and now that he has this outlet, he’s keeping it forever.  


  
But what’s funny, is that he has never wanted to be transient.  


It’s just jumped on him one day,  


  
and never let him go.  


  
>>>

  
HUMMING BIRD % THE END

 

 

feedback?


End file.
